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| Ohhh, NFP. I first heard about it during college at Gannon University, which is a Catholic school. I tried to argue against it (I'm not Catholic, so I did a lot of arguing during those years  ), but really, it does make sense. Instead of impairing your fertility, one of the greatest gifts God has given you, by using birth control, exercise some self-control & make a sacrifice for a few days every month if you're trying to avoid pregnancy. I grew to like the idea of it.
When I left Gannon, broke up with my Super-Catholic boyfriend, and entered the medical community, I started thinking of oral contraceptives as a normal, go-to thing. Just take the pill. On top of this, I started having some pretty bad pain from recurrent ovarian cysts. So last Feb. I started taking Yaz. Adam and I were getting married in a few months, so I figured it was perfect - I would get rid of my pain AND be "covered" for when we got married. The problem was, Yaz made me crazy!! I was depressed and moody, I had no appetite (I lost 5 lbs. eating pretty much nothing but cereal for 2 months), and I had absolutely no sexual feelings. On top of that, I had the worst headache of my life during the placebo pills of my first pack. Still, it took me 2 months of this misery to realize that the problem could be the Yaz. When that occurred to me, I started searching online to see if this was a common thing. It took about 5 seconds to find out that it happens to TONS of women!! I finished the few pills that were left in that pack, then took the 7 months' worth of samples back to the Ob-Gyn office that had given them to me. I was back to feeling like myself in a couple weeks. I remember calling Adam, ecstatic, saying, "I wanted food!!! I got hungry for something!!"  My emotions returned to normal too - which is pretty important when you're about to get married!
After all that, I decided to look into NFP again. Adam was in favor of it - he hated to see what that birth control did to me. We both did a lot of research about it, and I started charting my cycle in May. We've both been very happy with our experience with NFP since we got married.
In case anyone is reading and doesn't know what's involved in NFP, here it is in a nutshell... A woman's fertility can be determined by observing her basal body temperature, cervical mucus, and cervical position & texture. She's fertile for about 7-9 days every cycle. This is NOT the same as the rhythm method - you don't just assume that ovulation occurs on day 14. The fertile period starts when the cervical mucus starts to thicken, and it ends when the mucus becomes tacky & the basal body temperature rises. If a couple is practicing NFP and trying to avoid pregnancy, they abstain during the fertile time. Some people practice Fertility Awareness Method. They do the same charting, but use some kind of barrier method (condoms, withdrawal, etc.) during the fertile time.
Like I said, those are the principles IN A NUTSHELL! There is a lot to be learned, and it takes a little while to get the hang of charting and observing the signs. I learned quite a bit from www.nfpandmore.org, which is a Catholic website that has pdf's of reading material and charts that you can download for free. A few months later, I checked out a book from the library, "Taking Charge of your Fertility," by Toni Weschler. I learned a lot more about fertility signs from this book, and I also switched to the charts that she gives. I photocopied them from the back of the book. I just think they're easier to use.
In addition to learning the principles of NFP or FAM, as a couple, you also need to have the discipline and commitment to put them into practice. I take my basal body temperature at 6:30 every morning, whether that's the time I'm getting up for the day (it usually is) or I'm going back to sleep because it's the weekend. I check my cervical mucus every day and keep up with my charting. And Adam & I know that we will be abstaining for several days each month. We complain about it sometimes (we're newlyweds!!  ), but then we remind ourselves that we don't HAVE to do this - we choose to. We're choosing to wait a little while to have kids, and this is the way we want to achieve that. We also have the mindset that we'll see babies as a gift anytime, whether we've been specifically planning for them or not. But honestly, it's a really effective method for avoiding pregnancy, as long as both partners are committed to its practice.
Benefits:
- Zero side effects - I put nothing hormonal into my body. I don't worry about blood clots, heart attack, or a stroke; and I won't have the other, extremely common yet unreported side effects that so many women have - moodiness, depression, decreased libido, weight gain.
- It's cheap!! My thermometer was about $8, and like I said, I copied my charts from the back of the book, which I checked out at the library.
- Eco-friendly - there's nothing to throw away. I know a few condom wrappers or pill packages won't fill a landfill or even a garbage can every month, but I still feel good knowing that we aren't "using up" anything. Heck, you can even fill out your chart online so you don't use paper. I use paper ones and save them in a folder.
- It puts you in touch with your body. For me, this is a big plus. I really like knowing what is going on. I have boxes on my chart where I can record when I have headaches, pain, cramping, etc., and I like being able to look for patterns.
- It involves both partners. With oral contraceptives, it's the woman's responsibility to take her pill every day, and she gets all the side effects. In NFP, both people make the decision to abstain for a time during every month. Plus, the husband can get involved in charting. We don't do this very often, because usually Adam has to leave for work as early as 3:30 or 4 AM, but many couples put the husband in charge of the thermometer and marking the woman's basal body temp on the chart every day.
- Phase 3 - after ovulation has taken place and the egg is gone - is great! It's like a honeymoon every month!
- Easy to achieve pregnancy - when we decide we do want to have kids, it will take us no time to prepare for conception - I won't have to wait for any artificial hormones to get out of my system, and we'll already know when we're most fertile.
- As I mentioned before, I struggle with the morality of artificial contraceptive methods. I don't want to go near anything that could be abortive; nor do I want to put a piece of latex between me and my husband. I feel very much at peace using NFP.
The only downside for me has been that, when I stopped using the oral contraceptives, my pelvic pain came back. It's a persistent problem, and I'm going to the doctor in a couple weeks to see if something else could be causing it, and if there is anything non-hormonal I can do about it. For now, I just use ibuprofen and deal with it!
Some people think NFP and FAM are crazy, but what I think is crazy is accepting the ridiculous side effects associated with hormonal birth control. Many people who had my experience would have just switched from Yaz to a different brand, but I'm really glad I decided to go a different route.
If you have any questions about NFP, please ask me!
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| I'm officially on vacation for the next 2 weeks!! I really liked the last 3 weeks of school (psychiatry block), but honestly, sometimes it just get in the way of my life.  However, in my attempts to avoid schoolwork, I did ALL of our Christmas shopping & wrapping presents, so now I don't really have anything productive to do while I'm off. Luckily, I can spend endless amounts of time being UNproductive. hehe
I think I mentioned this in my last post (whenever that may have been), but I really am an under-contributory member of xanga. I get on it to read stuff pretty often, but it's rare that I feel like I have something worth posting about. Sure, I have interests and passions. And maybe soon I'll write about those. Maybe even during this vacation. But I no longer use xanga like I did in college, when I first started my site - "today I went to work... I like a boy... etc..." As I've matured, I think I talk about myself less than I used to. At least, I hope I do. At some point I started to notice how boring it was when people talked only about themselves, never asking about anyone else (heck, that's not just boring, it's totally rude!!), so I try to put other people first now, and bring the conversation to myself only when I think I truly have something important to say.
Anyway... I will start posting more often, and I'll post about things that matter to me. This week I will try to post about Natural Family Planning.
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| I've spent so much stinkin time on this site lately, I guess I should probably do my part and actually update my blog.
Marriage is wonderful! Well mainly Adam is just wonderful. He has to be the most loving, affectionate, thoughtful guy ever. I hope I'm doing ok as a wife. :)
School is rough. I have not been studying. :( But the last few days that's been because.....
Swine flu sucks. It started ruining my life Mon. evening and still hasn't completely stopped. I had terrible body aches, sore throat, asthma troubles Mon-Wed, with the fever only on Wednesday. That's the day I went to the dr. He put me on tamiflu since I have asthma, and I started taking tylenol for the fever. My temp took several hours to go down after I took the tylenol, but it's been fine ever since then. Body aches were gone that day too, but Thurs-today I've still felt intermittently crappy. Well, I'll start to feel ok, so I start doing a bunch of stuff, and then suddenly I feel like absolute death and end up lying on the couch for the next 4 hours. Today I was ridiculously nauseous, I think from the tamiflu. So I kinda wish I were not on that, but oh well. Better than having the flu stick around and then getting pneumonia.
So returning to my previous point... I have a lot of catching up to do in school. Missing 3 1/2 days of school - including 2 anatomy labs, a clinical skills lab, and OMM - is not cool.
The other day when I was too sick to do anything else, I laid in bed while Adam read Twilight to me! It was so sweet! See, I said he was the best.  But then he sadly had to leave town for work, and in about 15 min he'll finally be back!!
Ahh what else... found out my clinical site for the next 2 years, and I'm pretty happy with it. We'll still be about the same distance from my parents, but in the same town as my oldest brother, and it's a real city! Ha! Close to real roads and everything! It's been a while since I've lived in one of those.
Welp, my man will be here soon. Ciao for now.
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